1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a distributed processing system. More particularly, it relates, in a distributed processing system including a plurality of processing units to a distributed processing system and method which permit application program tests under on-line circumstances.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a distributed processing system including a plurality of processing units connected to a common transmission line, a method in which a program for executing each of a series of processes is started when data items necessary for executing the program have been completely received from the transmission line into a processing unit is disclosed in the official gazette of Japanese patent application Laid-open No. 57-146361. This method makes it possible to execute the series of processes by the respective processing units without requiring an executive processor for managing the whole system. However, it does not have means for testing programs developed in order to be loaded in the respective processing units by the use of on-line data and deciding whether they are normal or abnormal under on-line circumstances.
Some conventional systems other than the distributed processing system have means for gathering the result data of program processes. However, such means functions merely to take the logarithms of the data in time sequence and has been unsatisfactory for analyzing test results with the gathered results.